


Homecoming.

by tucuxi



Series: Through the looking-glass: Naruto genderswap!AU [9]
Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M, Genderbending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-21
Updated: 2011-05-21
Packaged: 2017-10-19 16:43:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/202993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tucuxi/pseuds/tucuxi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kakashi leaves ANBU and catches up with old ... friends?  Kakashi is 21.</p><p>Part of the <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/series/6842">Through the Looking-Glass</a> genderswap AU universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Homecoming.

**Author's Note:**

> Part of my (rather long) genderswap AU. Previous Kakashi-centric/Kakashi-only bits in this series are:  
> [Shinobi Skills](http://archiveofourown.org/works/169319), [New Sight](http://archiveofourown.org/works/169330) and [Reconstruction](http://archiveofourown.org/works/169336).

When Kakashi gets out of ANBU, Uchiha Shisui is the first person she runs into who she recognizes from before. They’ve interacted a handful of times in the last six years, but you never really get to know an ANBU member (even a family member) when the mask is on. It’s pretty obvious that Hound has the Sharingan, and any Uchiha will know Hound isn’t one of them, but one still attempts to maintain the polite fictions that keep identity and ANBU mask separate. And by that metric, she hasn’t seen Shisui in six years: it’s only polite to go to lunch with him, and it turns out he’s better company than she remembers.

Once they’re done eating, Kakashi finds herself at loose ends. She’s been in the habit of training after lunch: on a good day, she’d go out past Konoha’s walls and spar with Cat. That won’t be happening as regularly now, she knows.

“So,” she asks Shisui afterwards, on something of a whim, “join me sparring?” He looks at her for a moment before he nods, and they almost race over to the training grounds. It turns out he can keep up with her and doesn't pull his punches: they’re both breathing heavily when they call it a day. Kakashi’s pretty proud of the jab she got in to his ribs, under his guard, and she knows she’ll have to train to eliminate the gap he snuck through: a real enemy could have hamstrung her if they were as fast as he is. Almost no one is, even on S-class missions, but that’s no excuse for sloppy work. (Striving for perfection is just one part of her father’s legacy.)

Kakashi stops at the memorial stone on her way home, and lets herself stretch out one hand to trace Obito’s name, her first visit since taking off the mask. Obito probably wouldn’t have been quite as strong, she knows, and she’d fight entirely differently without his Sharingan: but sparring with Shisui still feels a little like an echo. Kakashi stands there for a long time, running the last six years through her head. When she looks up, the sun has almost set. Kakashi gives the memorial stone a final brush of her fingers. “I’m back.” she says softly; then she turns, and goes home.

* * *

A few days later, Shisui runs into her in the mission room: she’s handing in a report on behalf of her team; he’s handing something in on behalf of a cousin. They fall into step together on their way out the door, and head to the training fields again without a word. It becomes a pattern, then a habit. By the end of the month, they’re sparring nearly every day, if Kakashi isn’t out on a mission; they eat together afterwards often enough that Kakashi is getting accustomed to seeing two chairs at her kitchen table, instead of the usual one.

* * *

Kakashi’s just back from a mission when she heads to the training fields, hoping for a shortish bout. While she’s not entirely drained, her chakra levels are pretty low. Kakashi would never suggest skipping a session (unless she’s in the hospital, Kakashi trains like clockwork, interrupted only by her visits to the memorial stone), but she is planning to suggest they stick to taijutsu.

A few meters away from the center of the field, Kakashi hears a faint whisper and suddenly dives sideways, rolling swiftly to her feet. Shisui lands a hammer kick where Kakashi was standing an instant before: the ground cracks beneath his heel and fissures spiderweb out for several meters.

This isn’t entirely unfamiliar: if one of them is late, the other may lay in wait for a surprise attack, or vice versa. But when she looks up, he’s disappeared again, leaving only a flickering impression of red eyes. _Shit_ , Kakashi thinks, because if he’s got the Sharingan up already, he wants to go at it seriously. Kakashi pulls her hitae-ate up, keeping the eye closed for the moment. She sighs, very quietly: fighting someone with an active Sharingan without using hers is a challenge at the best of times, and she’s already tired.

Kakashi stretches her awareness out and finds that he’s not using any obvious clones: maybe he’ll be relying on speed to win this round? If she had both eyes open, that would be harder for him to manage, but as it is she knows she can’t afford to just scan the environment with it: the mission she just came back from wasn’t technically S-class, but it might as well have been. She’s been hoping to have a week or so to rest up before she goes back out, but it all depends. But dwelling on that now will get her killed (or, well, injured: she trusts Shisui to be able to pull a blow if she were really at risk, previous broken bones notwithstanding).

If he’s not above or behind her … Kakashi leaps up into a tree, breaking the training habits that she sometimes falls into these days — sparring with Cat has made trees seem a lot less innocuous. A bare moment later, Shisui breaks out of the earth: Kakashi recognizes the headhunter jutsu and makes a note to ask him to teach it to her later — it looks effective. Then his hands move in a series of seals that Kakashi doesn’t need the Sharingan to decipher: she avoids his fireball by far less of a margin than she’d ordinarily prefer, but she’s in better shape than the poor tree, which looks half made of charcoal, flames still flickering over its branches.

Since they’re only sparring, Kakashi could just keep on dodging: Shisui might get tired of it in a bit. But that’s a terrible strategy for someone with her reserves so low, so she ducks behind a tree and sends a shadow clone out to the left, jumping to her right at the same time. She’s come to use shadow clones more and more since she learned the jutsu: they don’t ping as fakes to the Sharingan or the Byakugan, which real clones do.

“Come on,” her clone jeers, jumping away through the treetops and disappearing in moments except for her voice: “that wouldn’t start a campfire!”

It’s a strain to keep her chakra portioned out like this, but Kakashi skips along the treeline until she’s behind Shisui, right where a Hyuuga’s blind spot would be. In the bare instant when he’s focused entirely on the clone, pulling his hands to his mouth to blow another katon, Kakashi sends a shuriken wheeling around him, wrapping him in chakra wire. He’s good: he gets one hand free, but that won’t do him much good: you can’t form seals with only one hand. Then he disappears, and she’s got chakra wire wrapped around a log, and a clear trajectory tracing back to where she threw from.

 _Son of a—_ Kakashi has time to think, leaping away from her perch and hoping she hasn’t just totally fucked herself over. She separates off another clone, and knows it’s the last time she’ll be able to do so tonight, unless she wants to go really far into the red, so to speak: there’s chakra she doesn’t touch sparring, and she knows exactly how far that goes. She’s going to have to close in: Shisui relies on the Sharingan a little more than he ought, and his taijutsu isn’t as strong as it could be. Kakashi never thought as a teenager that Guy’s constant, infuriating challenges would come in handy, but she’s gotten stronger in close combat than she otherwise might be thanks to his persistence.

Shisui is still out of her line of sight, and Kakashi needs to know where he is _now_ , if she’s going to end this anytime soon: he’ll pick up on her strategy if she gives him enough time to think. So she shoves the hitae-ate up, opens her eye, and sees the world in full-color, chakra glittering over everything. She scans fast, noting two spots that have Shisui’s chakra. One is lower: the residual chakra of a trap or botched jutsu. The other gleams like a person’s full system. Kakashi grins, lowers the hitae-ate again and sprints for the first. Shisui never sets traps: he relies on speed. She tamps her own chakra down as low as she can, even feeding a little more to the clone, and takes care to keep her landing on branches entirely noiseless. It’s hard, because she’s used to cushioning her footfalls with chakra, and she doesn’t think she can spare even that little bit: she bends her knees more on each landing to compensate, and feels her leg muscles complain.

Shisui comes into sight. Kakashi feels her clone poof out of existence and flings herself at him from one side, bowling them both over with her momentum. They roll through leaf-mold and moss and he almost gets away from her twice, before she lets him get his hands together for a jutsu and then grabs one wrist, spins him over and pins him, one arm wrenched behind his back and her knee in the small of his back.

“Well?” she says, when he doesn’t try to tap out. Finally, knowing that his arm must be completely asleep, Kakashi lets him up. She’s not entirely surprised when he springs up and tries to grab her again, and she avoids his lunge, leaping up into the trees again.

Shisui barks a frustrated laugh, and sits down, rubbing at his arm to try to improve the circulation. Then he puts his hands on the ground to either side of himself in a clear “time out” gesture. Kakashi hops down from her tree and joins him on the ground.

“Bad day?” she guesses, letting herself tip back onto the ground, ignoring the fact that she’ll get leaf-bits in her hair. (Kakashi figures that as long as she’s aware of these things, and intentionally breaks the rules instead of not knowing them, she’s not a bad kunoichi — just an unusual one.)

“Bad week.” Shisui answers, and she knows by his tone that it’s clan business and he won’t tell her any more, even if she asks. So she doesn’t: the Uchiha have been restless since before she left ANBU, and aside from keeping an eye on it (which the council is doing), there’s not much to be done without offending them. The only clan touchier, as far as Kakashi can see, is the Hyuuga.

“Hm,” she says in response, closing her eyes. Now that the adrenaline of the fight is wearing off, the injuries she sustained on her mission start speaking up again. She sighs, and focuses on breathing slowly, calming herself down so she can redirect her chakra evenly throughout her body again. They rest in silence for a while, and Kakashi is pleased to hear Shisui breathing hard, even if it wasn’t really much of a fight.

“D’you want to get—“ he starts to say, and then, “Kakashi!” He sounds surprised and faintly disapproving. She looks up: he’s kneeling next to her now.

“Yeah?” She’s really pretty tired now, and the ground isn’t too uncomfortable, “what?” He reaches out a hand towards her, hesitating, and then places it flat over her midriff: she feels his chakra focus there and recognizes one of the simpler diagnostic jutsu. She’s pretty sure she’s the one who taught it to him, now that she thinks about it.

“Why didn’t you go to the hospital?” Shisui asks, sounding a lot more worried than she thinks is warranted. “Didn’t you even go home and patch up, first?”

“I was running late,” she explains through a yawn. “B’sides, I can go home now.” She sits up on her own, carefully concealing how much effort it takes. That last clone had probably been a bad idea. Using her Sharingan had definitely been a bad idea, though she couldn’t have found him so quickly any other way. She’ll have to brush up on chakra-low diversions again, she thinks: clones are useful, but there’s no excuse for letting them become a crutch, letting them burn chakra she could use for the Sharingan.

Kakashi stands up on her own and when they walk through the training field on their way back to her apartment (because her place is closer, and it’s not in the Uchiha compound, where Kakashi often feels like something of a novelty, a curiosity, these days) she picks up her shuriken and chakra wire, winding it absently back onto an empty spool as they go.

Kakashi disappears into the bathroom when they get to her place: Shisui knows where the food is, and he’ll probably dish up some leftovers for both of them. Her tank top sticks unpleasantly to her skin in a couple of places, and her bra actually falls off, sliced criss-crossing diagonally across the back. What she really wants to do is scrub off quick, run a hot bath and just soak. But if she does that, she’ll fall asleep, and soaking untreated wounds is a really poor idea, no matter how tempting hot water sounds. So Kakashi rinses off fast, washes the leaf mold (and everything else) out of her hair, scrubs dry with a towel and makes sure nothing needs to be dressed or bound. Then she just wraps up in a robe. She considers pulling one of her cowled shirts back on, but it just doesn’t seem worth the effort. And it’s not as if Shisui has never seen her face before, with the number of times they’ve shared meals.

When Kakashi comes back into the other room (her apartment really only has the one room, though her kitchen-nook has delusions of grandeur sometimes) she smells miso soup and something faintly spicy — probably a curry.

“Mmm,” she says, “smells good.” Shisui turns, holding out a bowl.

“Here,” he says, “you want the soup, right?” She nods, and takes the bowl to the corner table, taking the rickety chair: it’ll hold her weight better than his, and balancing on it will help keep her awake.

They eat in silence, though Kakashi notices him taking sidelong looks at her every once in a while. He almost looks puzzled. The soup is warm and not terribly filling, and she finishes it before she really notices its taste. (She knows it was good soup: it’s a pity she didn’t taste it.) When she leans slightly forward to stand, Shisui leans in and kisses her. Kakashi freezes like a startled rabbit, thinking: _I should have expected this. I should have seen this coming._

“Kakashi,” he says softly, bringing one hand around to cup her cheek; he says her name almost reverently. “ _Kakashi—_ “ His hand is warm against her skin, and she lets herself lean into his touch, just a little bit. (It’s been such a long time since she let herself just touch anyone.) He brushes his thumb across the corner of her mouth and Kakashi almost shivers.

“Shisui,” she says, “I—“ and her voice is thicker than usual. She doesn’t know what she means to say. He leans in and kisses her again, gently, and she lets him, kisses back after a moment’s hesitation. Kakashi isn’t a virgin, hasn’t been for years, but Shisui is the first man who has ever kissed her.

When he stands and draws her up beside him, Kakashi follows: Shisui isn’t all that much taller than she is, so she doesn’t have to lean up very much into the kiss. When his hands settle on her narrow hips, she isn’t really sure what to do with hers, so she reaches up between them and unzips his vest, pushes it off his shoulders. He lets her pull it off, settle it on his chair.

“Kakashi,” he says, almost whispering, “what do you —“ She feels his hands moving up and down slightly at her waist, feels the cloth of the robe move with his hands, sliding smooth against her skin. It sends little prickles up her spine, and she pulls him into another kiss, opening her mouth to his this time without prompting. When she dares to lick into his mouth, remembering something she’s read, he moans and clutches at her hips a little bit. His hands feel huge against her, like he could pick her up and carry her off. (She knows he could, if she let him.)

Kakashi eases her hands around his back, feeling the muscles play under her hands. Abruptly, she realizes she wants this: she wants to feel him pressed up against her, wants to feel his skin hot under her hands.

“Shisui,” her voice is soft, and does not quaver at all, “can we —“ and she tucks her fingers up under his shirts, tugs lightly.

He’s still pretty much dressed, and she feels a little nervous about that, how much better protected and armed he is at the moment. Kakashi doesn’t distrust Shisui — he’s actually become one of her better friends here in Konoha, now that she’s out of ANBU. But only a fool leaves herself open to potential harm, and Kakashi has spent the last eight years trying hard not to play the fool anymore. Shisui strips his shirts off in a smooth gesture, and while his hands are above his head, she slices the bindings holding his thigh-holster in place, and tosses it to the kitchen table, along with the kunai knife she used to cut it free. He must trust her more than she’d thought, because he doesn’t react, just settles his hands around her waist again and kisses her, pulling her flush to him.

When Kakashi shifts up on tip-toe, she rubs against him and he groans. She can feel him hot and hard against her through his pants and her robe and she rubs against him again, getting used to how much she can feel. When Shisui kisses her harder, one hand cupping the back of her head gently, she has to pull back for a moment and move his hand: she’s too aware of how easily necks snap to be comfortable with that. They stand there in the middle of the room for long minutes, just kissing, and she feels his breath becoming ragged, feels her own following suit. When Kakashi unlinks her hands from around his neck and runs them down his chest, he shivers; when she tucks her fingers under the waistband of his pants, he groans, and steps back, pulling her with him.

They stumble toward the bed and his hands are warm and callused on her skin when he gently pulls her robe open. Kakashi fights the urge to pull it shut, to turn away from his gaze. She feels exposed, weak and defenseless, though she knows perfectly well that even now she could probably take him out, if she had to.

But this isn’t anything like combat, and that leaves her a little off-balance: her previous lovers have been fierce, demanding, have fucked like they fought. Shisui’s attention, this slower, gentler pace: they’re new to her and a little disarming. She feels surprisingly vulnerable because of it and wonders if this hesitation is something all women feel, or if it’s just her. Shisui must feel her pause, because he leans in to kiss her again, keeping his hands still on her hips. Then he kisses down the column of her neck and she arches against him, hissing in surprise: she’d no idea that could feel so good.

“Oh,” she whispers, _”oh_ ,” Kakashi feels him smile against her skin, and then he licks up her neck and she yelps and grabs at his arms when her knees just about give way. He laughs at that and she jerks back, wrapping the robe back around herself defensively and looking away.

“Kakashi,’ he says in a moment, voice soothing, “hey.” She looks anywhere but at him, feeling foolish and self-conscious. Maybe this was a bad idea after all. “Kakashi,” he repeats, ducking down into her field of vision, “come on.” She looks away again. He pulls her into a loose embrace and when she tucks her face against his shoulder he kisses the top of her head.

“All right,” she says after a moment and leans up to kiss him again. He kisses back softly.

When Shisui nudges her toward the bed she goes readily enough and pulls him down beside her.

“Kakashi,” he asks, “what do —“ She kisses him before he can finish his sentence, wriggles closer so their chests brush. He groans into the kiss again and she kisses a little harder, moves a little closer. One of them gasps when she brushes against his erection — she leans into him again and he wraps an arm behind her back and yanks her closer.

Kakashi hisses and ducks out from under his arm like she’s escaping a pin, clapping a hand to her side and hoping the slice there isn’t bleeding. “Sorry,” she says, “just —“

Shisui sits up and motions for her to turn around, pulling at the collar of her robe. When she lets the fabric drop to her elbows to bare her back, he exhales sharply.

“Kakashi,” he says, “what _happened_?”

“Wind jutsu,” she says, because the details of this mission were more classified than usual. He doesn’t press, the same way she’s learned not to press when it’s something about his family. She looks over her shoulder at him. “It’s fine,” she says, “it looks worse than it is, you know that.” He extends a hand toward her, doesn’t quite touch.

“Can I?” he asks, letting chakra start to shimmer around his fingers. She nods, and he rests his fingers against her skin, tracing the lines scored across her back. Kakashi feels his chakra shiver against her own as skin seals back together: no matter how much the Uchiha swear that the Sharingan copies everything exactly, she still feels a difference between a skilled medi-nin like Rin and someone like Shisui, who has simply copied the technique. But it still works, which is what matters right now. Kakashi sits still, feeling his fingers drag slow trails across her skin, letting herself relax slightly back into his touch. She closes both eyes for just a moment.

She wakes up from a sort of half-doze when Shisui stands.

“Thank you,” she says, instinctively starting to shrug up the robe again. When she stands up, he pulls her against him and leans in to kiss her gently. His hands rest lightly on her waist again and when he starts to pull away she covers his hands with her own. “You could stay,” she says tentatively, sitting back down on the bed and tugging very lightly. If she can fall asleep while he’s healing her she’s not going to be up for anything else, but it also means she might be able to sleep next to him without waking every time one of them shifts in their sleep.

Shisui looks down at her for a moment and something flickers through his eyes, too fast to decipher.

“All right,” he says, “yes, I can stay.”

When he lies down next to her, Kakashi tucks her head under his chin and stretches an arm across his chest.

“All right?” she asks, and feels him nod. It’s not the best she’s ever slept, but there is something comforting in having another person close and unarmed.

Shisui kisses her awake in the morning: she’s late to the memorial stone and even later turning in her report.


End file.
